A review of The Chronicles of Marnia, as published in issue #7 of If I Ever Recover in 2013:
This is it, then, the fag-end of the American hardcore dream, of the idea that work could set you free so long as you were your own boss, working by your own rules. This album could still be your life, of course. Just know that you might end up running a kissing booth in order to pay your debts.
The Chronicles of Marnia sounds like another one of Stern’s beautifully self-contained worlds, but it’s also an argument for the impossibility of such a thing. Opening track ‘Year of the Glad’ points towards good old-fashioned LA resurrection – “Everything’s starting now!” As always, Stern’s thoughts are in constant motion, but even with new drummer Kid Millions and bassist Nithin Kalvakota running alongside her, Stern still can't seem to reach escape velocity.
Following on from this doubtful explosion, ‘You Don’t Turn Down’ is Stern’s Get In The Van-style account of her global travels. “I am losing hope in my body” she chants as she choreographs an array of tiny guitar parts into one big Led Zepplin-style riff. It’s a miracle of composition, but the most startling moment comes when the other players drop away. Eyes closed, ignoring the tiny crowd in front of her, wailing over a minor key guitar line – here Stern is alone at last, if only in her own mind.
The rest of the album makes a big racket around the question of what to do with this feeling. Singles ‘East Side Glory’ and ‘Nothing Is Easy’ are as close as Stern comes to traditional anthems. Here, the quasi-mystical visualisations of ‘Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling’ are put to work battling every day doubts - “Too much hesitation/Just go out and make it”. Once again, though, these techniques do as much to manifest this doubt as they do to banish it. The peaks of ‘Nothing Is Easy’ layer Stern’s hammer-on heroics over crashing chords in a way that earns its sense of triumph; the guitar lines that run through ‘East Side Glory’, meanwhile, are like an itch too deep in your skull for any hand to scratch it.
Elsewhere, the relative clarity of Stern’s compositions and guitar tones seem to make space for bigger confrontations. ‘Proof of Life’ is built around back-to-back confessions: “All my life is based on fantasy/And all the gods, they've stopped talking to me.” The song is the least cluttered thing Stern has ever released, with rolling drums and piano carrying the verses, and an uncharacteristically restrained number of guitar parts layering in as the song goes on. Doubt has always animated Stern, but here that doubt finds its starkest expression “The work is never done/And that is all I have/And I can’t get it right.”
All that effort gone into building new worlds on your own terms, was it enough? Living up to its name, ‘Proof of Life’ ends with her looking for a sign - perhaps, simply that enough other people have made it into her world to maintain some sense of reality.